Hey all,
This is only tangentially related to HA, but it seems like this crowd might have answers. HA integration would be nice but is not required
We moved into a new house about 3 years ago and have been plagued by nuisance alarms ever since. They happen most often in the middle of the night, but aren’t uncommon in the daytime.
I have:
- Replaced all the old hardwired detectors with new battery-only ones thinking it might be caused by EMI.
- Ruled out insects crawling into the detectors.
- Sealed the electrical boxes thinking it might be dust from the attic.
- Installed an excellent filter system in the HVAC.
- Cleaned out all of the detectors with canned air.
Other random info:
- Only the ones on the second floor go off. There are five upstairs and two downstairs.
- I’m pretty sure one (and only one) of the false alarms was caused by humidity from a shower.
- Seems like they’re happening less often since I installed a new HVAC system, but that could be due to less dust or due to smaller temperature swings (less of a setback at night).
I think at this point I want to get some fancy multi-criteria alarms, ones that are specifically for reducing your nuisance alarm rate. Also for increased capability, though - one of my coworkers just narrowly escaped a housefire with his wife and dog. Their fire alarms failed to go off and he was only woken by the sound of the flames.
Any suggestions for multi-criteria alarms that work with hardwired 120VAC, preferably with hardwired interconnection?
A similar suggestion to the other poster:
Try relocating one of the troublesome units to someplace nearby but not mounted to the ceiling. The top of a bedroom dresser, the floor, a bathroom countertop, the top step of the stairs, halfway down the stairs, hanging from a wall (picture hook)… just get creative.
And since you haven’t mentioned it, I presume these are all smoke detectors? Do you have any heat detectors or carbon monoxide detectors installed?
You are not supposed to have smoke alarms in the bathroom or just outside of a shower bathroom for this reason actually. Also not in the kitchen. A heat detector is recommended for the kitchen.
I had alarms that would go off specifically in the winter in our stair tower because it was a 200 year old house that was renovated badly with no insulation.
Even my Fibaro smart CO alarm got bugged and drained its entire battery in 2 days because it was in a 5-10C environment (within their specs, but they simply lie on the specs).
From my experience, any life saving device simply can’t handle moderately cold temperatures at all, which is honestly extremely ridiculous to me and very dangerous.
Your problem, if dust related would likely be because you are using optical alarms which are easily susceptible to dust. If that is the case, you could try replacing those with ionization alarms on the 2nd floor. Ionization detects flaming fires better and optical detects very smokey fires better.
OP here, I ended up purchasing one USI MI106S, which advertises the following:
- Combines the benefits of both Photoelectric & Ionization technology in one alarm
- Smart Alarm Technology virtually eliminates nuisance alarms
- Automatic temperature and humidity compensation continuously adjusts to variations in environmental conditions, reducing nuisance alarms
Which sounds like what I’m looking for. I’ll try some informal tests on it before I buy more.
Not a device suggestion but a debugging suggestion, have you moved a second floor alarm with a ground floor alarm?
If not, move only 1 alarm and see if that goes off
It’s a good idea, but at this point I’m too frustrated to wait a few months to see if the moved alarm does or does not go off. And then I’d have to figure out what’s different and how to fix it.
Right now I’d rather spend some money and get smarter alarms, if they’re available.
That’s fair, was just a thought 🤔
